


Six Ways Lt. Laura Cadman Rates Her Teammates

by ArwenLune



Series: Rock Happy 'verse [16]
Category: Generation Kill, Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Point of View, Gen, Lists, Team, introspective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-02
Updated: 2013-05-02
Packaged: 2017-12-10 05:51:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/782537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArwenLune/pseuds/ArwenLune
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They are her team and even though she isn't always with them, she loves each one of them.</p><p>That doesn't mean they are equal. She has ways of ranking them by favourite.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Six Ways Lt. Laura Cadman Rates Her Teammates

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, I found this thing that was nearly finished, so I finished it

It's a weird position to be in - to be the teammate who is only with the team on emergency missions. If she didn't make an effort to spend time with them socially, she would really only see the sides of her teammates that give grim, curt status updates and throw grenades.  
  
Thankfully she is their friend as well as teammate. Lee was the only other military woman shipping out on the second wave, so despite the gulf between their personalities and respective branches of the military they've always talked. Michèl has always made a point of including her in the team dynamic. Perhaps because he has the same thing, but in reverse; he sees the team through a hundred uninhabited planets, weird rituals and boring negotiations, but he doesn't see the high of a successful rescue operation, or the low of recovering bodies. He doesn't see the first time Brad and Lee synch up without realising, or when Brad becomes the Iceman when they enter a hostile settlement, or Lee in strategy mode coordinating a raid on the Genii, or the Captain in stone cold killer mode.  
(That last is somehow more unsettling than when Brad does it, because with Brad it's always there under the surface. The Captain is such an affable man 90% of the time that the switch up into killer is always startling. Maybe it's the British accent misleading her.)  
  
In a way, Laura and Michèl are always playing catchup on how the 'core three' are doing. She tells him about wordless understanding in a gaze across a clearing, he tells her about a team marriage to be considered adult and worthy of seeing the Ancient temple. (she feels left out - the next friday they play Scrabble and inform her that she is now also married to each of them.)  
  
They are her Team and even though she isn't always with them, she loves each one of them.  
  
That doesn't mean they are equal. She has ways of ranking them by favourite.  
  
 **Best assistant for blowing shit up**  
The Captain knows what he's doing and Lee is good at following Laura's lead when it comes to demolition plans. But Brad is the one she prefers if it comes to complicated demolitions - he works fast, safe, and he doesn't need to know the whole plan to execute his part in whatever she's planning. The Captain is excellent with explosives but less used to not being in control, and tends to want to know her entire game plan. When she's already calculated things in her head and the clock is ticking, Brad's the one she likes to have at her side, working doggedly on and understanding what she wants with only half a word. She's never said this out loud, but she's pretty sure that Lee knows her preference, because in situations where explosives are likely to be needed, she usually ends up paired with Brad.  
  
 **Best Cook**  
Michèl is the one with the five-course meals and fancy recipes and the talent for finding Pegasus substitutes for Earth ingredients. Lee is the best field cook - as the captain puts it, their Desert Island cook - who can make magic out of nothing. The Captain makes a mean meatball, but is happy to concede the kitchen arts to others. And the one time they suggested Brad should cook for a friday team dinner, he'd threathened to feed them MREs until they turned it into a team cooking night.  
  
 **Best In An Embarrassing Native Ritual**  
There is nobody like Michèl when you find out that today's meal blessing involves dancing anticlockwise around a cooking pot, waving a bunch of herbs, which then needs to be thrown at the cook. Michèl carries off that sort of thing not only with aplomb, but with the sort of genuine interest in the ritual that always pleases the natives. And takes the attention off the fact that the rest of them might have some trouble not laughing.  
Lee can take the weirdest shit with the sort of straight-faced acceptance that gives nothing away - which is a good thing, because as the two women in the company the two of them tend to be subject to the most bizarre rituals. Lee's straight face helps Laura keep it together when she struggles not to burst out laughing. 'We're laughing on the inside' is a frequent joke between them.  
Brad, now he's gotten used to Pegasus, is surprisingly game for all sorts of stuff. It's partly 'Marines make do', but when she asked him once, he shrugged and said that after he'd nearly been schwacked by artie ordered by his own company commander, what was a little weird hugging ritual?  
It's the Captain who gets flustered - not usually, but in the more... inappropriate rituals. She's never quite sure if it's the innate Britishness of him that rebels against some of the stuff they're asked to do, or if he's just keenly aware that his team is the only one with two female junior officers, and of what reports about some of these rituals would do to them.  
  
 **Best Hugger**  
Not that she hugs them that often, but sometimes it's the only logical reaction in the aftermath of a serious FUBAR mission. Michèl hugs like you are completely welcome in his space, all calm and warm, and has no compunction about being seen to hug in public, so he's her favourite by far. Especially because he always comes to the infirmary after the SRE team has been on rescue missions and hugs them all welcome back.  
Lee doesn't like to hug in public, but when she's at ease, or in private, can give the kind of slightly awkward embrace that says that she isn't used to spontaneous affection, but is making an exception just for you. Laura can appreciate intent even if the execution of the hug is lacking. The Captain has slung an arm around her once or twice, but is always aware of who is watching him. And Brad and hugging? That just doesn't mix.  
  
 **Best Person To Share Bodyheat With (It's Not Cuddling When You're A Marine, Damnit)**  
This doesn't happen all that often - getting stuck in glaciers is more AR5's forte, which is fortunate because Captain Lundgren has a shitton of arctic experience. So it's not like Laura has shared bodyheat with all of her teammates, but she can speculate.  
The most convenient and/or least inappropriate way to pair people up would be for Laura and Lee to huddle up, but Lee is usually the first to get cold, so the shared bodyheat thing just wouldn't work with the two of them.  
Michèl is the least awkward about it, so if he were present that would probably be who she'd ends up sharing blankets with. Apparently Cap is a furnace, and when it comes to it, surprisingly pragmatic about things like this. As far as she knows he has always picked Lee, either because the warmest person sharing with the coldest makes most sense, or because he's most familiar with her. Or maybe because half the city already thinks they are sleeping together anyway.  
She suspects that despite his nickname, Brad would be a furnace. Probably he'd also be hilariously awkward about the whole thing, but she hasn't been on that kind of mission with him yet, so that's just a guess. (Months later Lee does end up in that sort of situation with Brad, but all she'll say is that both the furnace and the awkward assertions are true.)  
  
 **Most Welcome Face When the Shit Hits The Fan**  
They are all good in an emergency, it's what they _do_. There is just something extremely reassuring about seeing Lee take in a situation with what Laura thinks of as her 'Right, let's unfuck this shit' face. Because when you're in trouble seeing any Atlantean means help, but seeing Lee means the SRE team is there, means cool-headed assesment and coordination. It means that nobody is going to make half-assed rescue attempts and fuck things up further. Seeing Lee means there is a plan - or there will be very shortly.  
Captain Avery is not a Marine, but he is the sort of well-balanced experienced that isn't prone to over-escalating, and reluctant as she is to admit that Marine style overkill isn't always the answer, Avery's level-headedness keeps the troops in check and has saved their collective asses a time or two.  
Brad and Michèl share third because it depends on what sort of shit is hitting the fan. In a firefight, Brad operates in a way she's so familiar with that it's like breathing in unison - they share enough training that a glance and a gesture is all it takes to synch up. If the shit is more cultural, Michèl is the one most likely to save the day, or at least find the right approach to ride things out without casualties.

But really, the time when she was out with Weapons Platoon and the shit hit the fan in a very angry-natives sort of way? She wanted all of them there, please.    
  
  



End file.
